Information as a resource in the national health service

摘要

This paper focuses on the concept of information as a resource in business and industry, with particular reference to healthcare. The impact of the information technology revolution, combined with the recent fundamental Government review and reorganization of the National Health Service (NHS) has meant a change in attitude by managers towards the use of information, both in terms of its impact on the service generally, and on their own abilities to manage effectively. The major issues and constraints affecting the use of information in the NHS were considered in a previous study by the authors. In the NHS the term ‘information’ traditionally refers to numeric, usually internally produced throughout data, and statistics. In this paper information is used in its wider sense, unless specified otherwise, to cover numeric and textual information.